Posted by namshub on 5/17/2013 10:16:00 PM (view original):If you can't win half your games you shouldn't be in the post-season unless you win your conference tourney. Realistically, if you can win 7 non-conf. games you still don't have to finish .500 in your own conference to reach .500 overall. If you can't do that you either don't know how to schedule or you're not good enough to play in the post-season. If you know your in some mega-conference then schedule 9 or 10 wins so you only have to win 4 or 5 conference games. The arguments put up against a .500 requirement that have been posted so far are very weak imo, especially at the DI level. The benefit to mid-majors getting into the PIT at the DI level surely outweigh the Big 6 getting more post-season teams then they already do in the NT.

Actually seems like a no-brainer.

seems the arguments for .500 teams being excluded are VERY VERY VERY WEAK then, by your standard.

i agree with the poster who suggested a YES FOR D1 ONLY option be included in the poll. i could go for that, because d1 is so unbalanced already. but in d2/d3, no way. why shouldnt the best teams get in to create the most competitive competition? you want a competition to be competitive, its redundant, it goes without saying - so i think its very obvious the strong argument needs to be made FOR excluding teams who don't go .500, not the opposite. its really a somewhat ridiculous notion, along the lines of "give every kid who competed a trophy". in d1, the only reason i can palate that sort of crap is because there are so many problems already, making things pretty unbalanced, but that is clearly a 2 wrongs making a right situation, at best, IMO.

If you read the rest of the thread, i clarified that all of my argument was for DI only. I don't play DII or DIII but based upon the outcry from those coaches i will defer and say it wouldn't be good for those divisions. My point remains the same. The OP made a SIMPLE suggestion that would slightly alter, in favor of small schools, the completely unbalanced playing field between Big 6 schools and other conferences. He wasn't suggesting an engine fix, just a small matter that could be implemented without to much effort. For those who have played this game and deny the inequity between Big 6 conferences and others, well, i don't know what to say. The prestige boost to small schools and the extra recruiting cash may go along way in trying to compete at that level.

Arguing on behalf of teams that finish 4-12 or 5-11 in there conference to get additional money for that conference, which already has to much to count, doesn't make sense to me. That sounds like a "give every kid a trophy" argument. ;) We played, we couldn't win but we want to go play in the post-season anyway because we got beat by really good teams.

Posted by colonels19 on 5/21/2013 9:58:00 PM (view original):Redlining me says all it has to say about your argument...and people get on me for not taking into account the other side of the coin...irony...lol

To be clear, I reported your post because it was profane and included a baseless insult to WIS staff.

I don't want to sway the results of the poll either way, and I'm pleased there has been intelligent debate on both sides of the question.

Baseless insult? I saw seble rush to retrieve that guy's recruits who got poached (when he first said/claimed it was done legally), and I saw him rush to get coach_billyg bollocked off of one of his teams, so do I think seble is dumb enough to take bait from someone who cries the loudest...yes, and that was and is the point I'm making. If you're making any changes in anything based on a 55% "YES" vote from 10% of the participants, then you're insane.

No offense...if you were really interested in intelligent debate, you would have left my post up...funny that it was the one you didn't agree with...gonna redline this one too?

Posted by namshub on 5/17/2013 10:16:00 PM (view original):If you can't win half your games you shouldn't be in the post-season unless you win your conference tourney. Realistically, if you can win 7 non-conf. games you still don't have to finish .500 in your own conference to reach .500 overall. If you can't do that you either don't know how to schedule or you're not good enough to play in the post-season. If you know your in some mega-conference then schedule 9 or 10 wins so you only have to win 4 or 5 conference games. The arguments put up against a .500 requirement that have been posted so far are very weak imo, especially at the DI level. The benefit to mid-majors getting into the PIT at the DI level surely outweigh the Big 6 getting more post-season teams then they already do in the NT.

Actually seems like a no-brainer.

seems the arguments for .500 teams being excluded are VERY VERY VERY WEAK then, by your standard.

i agree with the poster who suggested a YES FOR D1 ONLY option be included in the poll. i could go for that, because d1 is so unbalanced already. but in d2/d3, no way. why shouldnt the best teams get in to create the most competitive competition? you want a competition to be competitive, its redundant, it goes without saying - so i think its very obvious the strong argument needs to be made FOR excluding teams who don't go .500, not the opposite. its really a somewhat ridiculous notion, along the lines of "give every kid who competed a trophy". in d1, the only reason i can palate that sort of crap is because there are so many problems already, making things pretty unbalanced, but that is clearly a 2 wrongs making a right situation, at best, IMO.

1) I wanted to keep the poll simple,
2) very few teams with losing records in D2 and D3 get PIT bids, so a .500 rule wouldn't have much impact there, and
3) I wanted to poll about the principle of having such a rule at all, rather than technicalities how it would be implemented. I have no delusions that this poll is going to change anything in the game, it's just a point of information that I thought would be interesting.

Thanks again for everyone's participation and well-considered comments. The vote margin has once again become quite close.

Posted by ike1024 on 5/19/2013 9:49:00 PM (view original):"But where's the incentive to actually coach if you're guaranteed a PT berth based on a high (high as in good) SOS?"

Don't disagree, but can't the same be said about scheduling 10 crappy sims?

It definitely can. But isn't it harder to beat a crappy team than it is to lose to a good one?

It's harder to go 5-5 against a difficult schedule than 10-0 against sims.

This...I can't believe how people are basically just willing to throw SOS out the window for 14-13...wow, unreal.

So is it not harder to beat a crappy team than it is to lose to a good team? I notice neither of you answered my question.

I first want to say that the redlined/deleted post, the first one, would have shed a lot of light about how I feel in this situation, but I'll be happy to break it down for you again...so here's what I'll say.

I used to think that the PR and my BPI cbb rankings were very similar. The controversial times that I would plug the numbers into my formula, they always seemed to produce the same results as the PR, thus I backed it unequivocally. After doing an analysis with jetwildcat's situation and finding that I would have had Loyola-MD #1, Virginia Tech #2, and Wake Forest #3, I've basically pulled a lot of/all my support for the PR because it doesn't in fact reflect what my rankings do...I think my rankings/way of ranking teams is the best and if I didn't, then why would I do it? What I realized as someone who has produced college football rankings for 10 years and college basketball rankings for 4 years was/is that the ranking system (projection report) needs to be improved.

All wins rate higher than all losses in my BPI rankings, and I specifically made this so because if you rate some losses over some wins, you're inherently suggesting that winning and losing don't matter (when winning is the object of any game) and that's just crazy. So yes a 1 point win over the 324th ranked team rates higher than a 1 point loss to the #1 team...but understand that such a comparison is only 1/27th (3.5%?) of an entire schedule, thus each game on every schedule has equal weight and needs to be viewed in its own individual manner until you have 27 indvidual game analyses v. 27 individual game analyses.

With that said, the highest ranked team with a losing record in my 2013 NCAAB rankings was Nebraska (15-18) at #93 and the lowest ranked team with a winning record was New Jersey Tech (16-13) at #257...a difference of 164 spots! Also note that there are at least over 100 references of this in my rankings (and probably a bunch of other ranking systems) having teams with losing records ahead of teams with winning records.

So I'm not nor ever will I back some patchwork, patch-based argument for a minimum win requirement because it's absolutely asinine and unnecessary. Again with my all wins > all losses ranking format, there are still "losing" teams that rank over 150! spots higher than "winning" teams and this is in real life.

Jetwildcat seems to want to still clamor about this and at me WHEN MY SYSTEM BACKS HIS TEAM/ARGUMENT! That's unreal...and that's the fix, folks. I don't like using the I'm better/smarter than you argument, but in truth, I've developed, researched, and produced rankings of all kinds more than most of you have ever even thought about how it might/should work. That's not a slap at any of you, it's just a reference point of how much I've done along the way and my mental madness, the things that interest me in sports, etc.

If any of you reject what I have to say for whatever reason, my candor, etc...I would refer you to gillispie's posts in this thread because they're spot on. Understand that I'm very set on my conclusions here because this is something I thought about in depth and worked on 4+ years ago.

The Projection Report is better than just using base RPI (which was what was used before, solely?) but given jetwildcat's incident here, it's proven that it needs some/a lot of work...again a win requirement of any kind just makes excuses for a poor/inadequate system.

Posted by namshub on 5/17/2013 10:16:00 PM (view original):If you can't win half your games you shouldn't be in the post-season unless you win your conference tourney. Realistically, if you can win 7 non-conf. games you still don't have to finish .500 in your own conference to reach .500 overall. If you can't do that you either don't know how to schedule or you're not good enough to play in the post-season. If you know your in some mega-conference then schedule 9 or 10 wins so you only have to win 4 or 5 conference games. The arguments put up against a .500 requirement that have been posted so far are very weak imo, especially at the DI level. The benefit to mid-majors getting into the PIT at the DI level surely outweigh the Big 6 getting more post-season teams then they already do in the NT.

Actually seems like a no-brainer.

seems the arguments for .500 teams being excluded are VERY VERY VERY WEAK then, by your standard.

i agree with the poster who suggested a YES FOR D1 ONLY option be included in the poll. i could go for that, because d1 is so unbalanced already. but in d2/d3, no way. why shouldnt the best teams get in to create the most competitive competition? you want a competition to be competitive, its redundant, it goes without saying - so i think its very obvious the strong argument needs to be made FOR excluding teams who don't go .500, not the opposite. its really a somewhat ridiculous notion, along the lines of "give every kid who competed a trophy". in d1, the only reason i can palate that sort of crap is because there are so many problems already, making things pretty unbalanced, but that is clearly a 2 wrongs making a right situation, at best, IMO.

If you read the rest of the thread, i clarified that all of my argument was for DI only. I don't play DII or DIII but based upon the outcry from those coaches i will defer and say it wouldn't be good for those divisions. My point remains the same. The OP made a SIMPLE suggestion that would slightly alter, in favor of small schools, the completely unbalanced playing field between Big 6 schools and other conferences. He wasn't suggesting an engine fix, just a small matter that could be implemented without to much effort. For those who have played this game and deny the inequity between Big 6 conferences and others, well, i don't know what to say. The prestige boost to small schools and the extra recruiting cash may go along way in trying to compete at that level.

Arguing on behalf of teams that finish 4-12 or 5-11 in there conference to get additional money for that conference, which already has to much to count, doesn't make sense to me. That sounds like a "give every kid a trophy" argument. ;) We played, we couldn't win but we want to go play in the post-season anyway because we got beat by really good teams.

i was posting as i went, although i still object to your characterization of arguments before your post as "weak" when the burden falls on those who want the limit, not those opposed to it. but it sounds like we are in agreement on d2/d3. d1 i am somewhat torn, but as i said i could possibly get behind that. theoretically, i hate the idea, because its obviously not the ideal solution - the projection report should be good enough not to need such artificial limitations. plus, there are so many cases where a 13-15 team is CLEARLY better than a 15-13 team, it just doesnt seem right to exclude the clearly better team from consideration altogether. do you only allow teams who have beaten 3 top 100 RPI teams in? it seems usually, you want guys who have done so to weed out the guys who played nobody, just like usually, you want guys who went .500. but its not a hard and fast rule, there are sufficient exceptions which is why i prefer organically ranking and seeding teams.

i do however agree the current system incorrectly compares low end bcs and high end mid major teams - not by much, but a little. not enough for me to support an artificial rule, at least. but more importantly, the recruit/recruit generation/conference bonus scheme is super heavily weighted against mid majors, which i think we all agree about. i would say that clearly its better to fix that, from an idealistic/theoretical standpoint, than to throw mid majors a bone with some PIT bids. but that may never happen, and at least not soon, which is why i would *consider* supporting a .500 rule, just to help that wrong. but i very strongly feel thats two wrongs making a right (well, a still wrong, but not as wrong, i suppose)? so im not sure we are that far apart... from a practical standpoint, at least

So yes a 1 point win over the 324th ranked team rates higher than a 1 point loss to the #1 team...

This is among the dumbest things I have ever read in this forum. A system that weights raw wins and losses this strongly has no validity in any sport that isn't decided when the loser dies.

Lol, I was waiting for this, I've argued against this before and will every time it comes up.

The margin between these occurrences is very slim...it's not like that win is worth 100 and the loss is worth -100...I won't give you the exact numbers, but it's quite narrow.

I used to rate some losses ahead of some wins...last back in 2004 or 2005, until I realized how dumb it was because it's in direct contrast to the objective of the game. Trust me, it gets to be a very slippery slope when you start trying to determine what losses are better than what wins...you start making arbitrary judgment calls...where do you draw the line...etc. When you start suggesting that failure is better than success, that's where I draw the line.

Lastly, you can say what you will about my rankings, but I don't think there's anything invalid about correctly picking ALL 2013 NCAAB at-large teams for the NCAA tournament. I find it funny when guys pick out the one thing they don't like/sounds off and they go after it. You can't go wrong when you base your decisions on logic and reason.

Posted by namshub on 5/17/2013 10:16:00 PM (view original):If you can't win half your games you shouldn't be in the post-season unless you win your conference tourney. Realistically, if you can win 7 non-conf. games you still don't have to finish .500 in your own conference to reach .500 overall. If you can't do that you either don't know how to schedule or you're not good enough to play in the post-season. If you know your in some mega-conference then schedule 9 or 10 wins so you only have to win 4 or 5 conference games. The arguments put up against a .500 requirement that have been posted so far are very weak imo, especially at the DI level. The benefit to mid-majors getting into the PIT at the DI level surely outweigh the Big 6 getting more post-season teams then they already do in the NT.

Actually seems like a no-brainer.

seems the arguments for .500 teams being excluded are VERY VERY VERY WEAK then, by your standard.

i agree with the poster who suggested a YES FOR D1 ONLY option be included in the poll. i could go for that, because d1 is so unbalanced already. but in d2/d3, no way. why shouldnt the best teams get in to create the most competitive competition? you want a competition to be competitive, its redundant, it goes without saying - so i think its very obvious the strong argument needs to be made FOR excluding teams who don't go .500, not the opposite. its really a somewhat ridiculous notion, along the lines of "give every kid who competed a trophy". in d1, the only reason i can palate that sort of crap is because there are so many problems already, making things pretty unbalanced, but that is clearly a 2 wrongs making a right situation, at best, IMO.

If you read the rest of the thread, i clarified that all of my argument was for DI only. I don't play DII or DIII but based upon the outcry from those coaches i will defer and say it wouldn't be good for those divisions. My point remains the same. The OP made a SIMPLE suggestion that would slightly alter, in favor of small schools, the completely unbalanced playing field between Big 6 schools and other conferences. He wasn't suggesting an engine fix, just a small matter that could be implemented without to much effort. For those who have played this game and deny the inequity between Big 6 conferences and others, well, i don't know what to say. The prestige boost to small schools and the extra recruiting cash may go along way in trying to compete at that level.

Arguing on behalf of teams that finish 4-12 or 5-11 in there conference to get additional money for that conference, which already has to much to count, doesn't make sense to me. That sounds like a "give every kid a trophy" argument. ;) We played, we couldn't win but we want to go play in the post-season anyway because we got beat by really good teams.

Really, you're arguing about money? So if we pull the $1600 Nebraska made the Big-12 and give it the Metro Atlantic, suddenly Loyola will be able to recruit with the big boys?

I voted against the thread, not because there isn't a problem in DI, but because installing this arbitrary rule doesn't come close to affecting the issue. Simple things that could be implemented that would actually help would include:
Reducing the weight of baseline/conference prestige
Adjust the postseason money in DI, either by flipping scholarship and NT game money, or just making it the same (as in lower divisions)
Fixing recruit generation so there isn't as significant gaps between the very best recruits and everyone else

AWWWW, Now I know who you are colonels19. If you are the one that came up with the BPI, than YES I 100% agree with you and have studied that system or at least tried to in the past. Definitely better than the RPI and little bit better than the projection report.